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b100dian

Member

Registered: 2007-06-09

Posts: 20

[SOLVED] Pipewire is using my camera

Hello,
I recently updated to pipewire, and just before the KDE 6 update, I noticed powertop showing me

Power est.              Usage       Events/s    Category       Description
  4.57 W      2.2 pkts/s                Device         Network interface: wlp2s0 (iwlwifi)
  2.53 W    100.0%                      Device         USB device: Integrated_Webcam_HD (CNFEH73N4154000192F2)
  1.54 W    690.6 µs/s     203.2        Interrupt      [17] idma64.1

Now, usually with bugs I do update and :fingerscrossed: they will be fixed.

But the thing remains,

$ lsof /dev/video0
COMMAND    PID USER FD   TYPE DEVICE SIZE/OFF NODE NAME
pipewire  3708 vlad 46u   CHR   81,0      0t0  831 /dev/video0
wireplumb 3716 vlad 37u   CHR   81,0      0t0  831 /dev/video0

Any pointers of how to disable camera in pipewire? Thanks

Last edited by b100dian (2024-03-13 21:17:14)

V1del

Forum Moderator

Registered: 2012-10-16

Posts: 24,839

Re: [SOLVED] Pipewire is using my camera

Why? Programs using libpipewire/webrtc will want to use the camera over the common interface which pipewire provides.

If you still want to disable this regardless, create a file in e.g. ~/.config/wireplumber/main.lua.d/85-disable-camera-conf.lua with

libcamera_monitor.enabled = false
v4l2_monitor.enabled = false

as the content.

Last edited by V1del (2024-03-12 14:29:35)

b100dian

Member

Registered: 2007-06-09

Posts: 20

Re: [SOLVED] Pipewire is using my camera

Thanks V1del !

This is actually much better than editing /etc - which I did, for v4l but missed libcamera.

I agree about the usage of webrtc, but since 99% of the time that is not used, I will take my ~2W powertop value and bump my battery life from 4h to 6h (anecdotical evidence for now),

V1del

Forum Moderator

Registered: 2012-10-16

Posts: 24,839

Re: [SOLVED] Pipewire is using my camera

When not in active use that sounds like a pretty big pipewire/wireplumber/libcamera bug (not sure who of these is the ultimate culprit here...)

In any case, please mark as [SOLVED] by editing the title in your first post.

Last edited by V1del (2024-03-13 00:03:00)

b100dian

Member

Registered: 2007-06-09

Posts: 20

Re: [SOLVED] Pipewire is using my camera

Ok, marking as such.
I think I found the pipewire bug logged too https://gitlab.freedesktop.org/pipewire … te_2252704